Ecommerce Strategy for Dubai Launched

Ecommerce in the  GCC is still in its early stages despite successful projects here and there like Souq (now Amazon.ae). There are a few fundamental, structural issues that need to be addressed if countries like the UAE are going to be successful.

Political will and leadership is a key ingredient to enabling ecommerce, so it is great to see that Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, has announced the launch of the emirate’s e-commerce strategy.

The strategy includes a goal to increase the contribution of e-commerce to Dh12 billion in the local economy by 2023.

Perhaps more interestingly, the strategy aims to increase regional and global share of e-commerce companies operating in Dubai to Dh24 billion by 2020. This is important and one of the reasons why UK Ecommerce companies have been successful – because they see online as a way to increase exports and sell to a global market.

The strategy aims to reduce the total cost of e-commerce operations by 20 per cent. Some of these are under government control – like customs duties and VAT on transport – but other costs, which the strategy targets, like the costs of returned goods are more difficult to legislate for.

At the macro level, this is about logistics hubs and cloud computing deals. It’s also part of a wider trend in the region to diversify economies and foreign direct investment (FDI) away from more traditional industries like oil and gas and capture a share of the digital economy.

Digital and Ecommerce success though is not attributable to technology only. Talent is one of the main factors that needs to be at the heart of the digital economy. While there is movement in the right direction here. company setup costs and procedures, visas and banking are hindering growth.

At a recent Shopify Meetup in Dubai, would be ecommerce entrepreneurs were more interested in company setup, and access to payment gateways than which online shopping platform to choose.